India is reportedly preparing to lead a last ditch resistance against the Orwellian ACTA treaty. (Source: Warner Brothers)

ACTA implements a variety of major provisions -- criminalization of peer-to-peer engine development, thought crime, and seizure of international pharmaceutical shipments. (Source: English Club)

Coalition of developing nations may break ACTA, or at least force U.S. to weaken its terms

President
George W. Bush and President Barack Obama over the last several years
have masterminded an international
piracy pact called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement). The U.S. leaders long pushed the international
community to keep
the treaty secret till its enactment, but now at last it's
out in the open for public review.

In the draft version, gone
are some startling provisions (such as warrantless
border searches of petty items like iPods for suspected
infringed materials). But in their place are equally alarming
measures such as the creation of a new class of intellectual property
crime called "imminent infringement" -- this by definition
is basically thought
crime (the idea here is to prosecute people who might be
getting ready to infringe with a crime).

A major world power
may finally be ready to stand up to the U.S.'s controversial treaty.
A major Indian politician speaking
with the India
Times under
condition of anonymity said their country was mounting a resistance
effort. States the source, "We will hold talks with
like-minded countries (read Brazil, China, Egypt, etc.) and may
oppose the ACTA proposal jointly as well as individually by holding
talks with countries involved."

India is particularly
worried about certain patent provisions of the treaty. For
example, if India sent Mexico a shipment of pharmaceuticals not
covered by patents in those countries, but covered by patents in the
U.S., U.S. customs officials could seize that shipment at sea.

ACTA
describes:

[Infringement
could occur] if a medicine or product is made for which a company
holds a patent in any country, no matter how unclear in scope and
validity of the patent is.

That's
just one of the terms that the leaders of the U.S. and other wealthy
nations can appreciate. They circumvent typical copyright
forums -- the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual
Property Organization -- instead favoring secrets summits of only
wealthy nations such as the U.S., EU, Canada, Japan, and
Australia.

While it may be too late for India to kill ACTA
entirely, a unified resistance from developing nations -- like India,
China, and Brazil -- could force the U.S. to significantly weaken
it. ACTA is just one of the signs of a reinvigorated
anti-piracy movement in the U.S., starting at the level of media
corporations and their government lobbyists.

Its all about control and ownership. Everything is OK as long as the rest of the world follows the US of A like Lemmings or sheep. As long as the US of A has that control, that's all that matters. The US of A can do no wrong in their own minds.

Just make sure to send a message to the rich asses of riaa & mpaa by not buying new products but finding those products used somewhere.i have not bought a new movie or music for over a year now.all my fims/music are used or INDIE stuff.ACTA is a hunk of krap.I hope the greedy rich corps are made to suffer over it.

even that is not protected anymore. The days of used media are likely waning as we can see with games, and sadly its likely this will spread.

And lets be honest here.

-Buy your music it fuels the "digital Yakuza"

-Pirate your music and you become part of their statistic and face potential lawsuit or inflate numbers which give them more leverage (how long till a direct representative gets a seat in the house with the way things are going?)

-buy small scale music\media from companies and artists as protest. Become part of a miniscule unreferenced statistic and dedicate a collectively large portion of your time back researching every purchase, but miss out on 99% of the market.

Lets be realistic here. As dedicated to the cause as you might be you will ALWAYS be a statistic there. The majority of people wouldn't move to indie only even if it cost their first born every time.

The only way we are going to make a difference is if we find ways to TRULY influence MANY politicians but with the greased pockets that's going to be difficult. Its certainly the best place to dedicate your efforts.

Here is hoping international readers can influence THEIR politicians to stand up to acta for a small win.

unless there's a movement similar to boycott of vista in favor of other oses then riaa and mpaa won't budge. Movies and music are quite intertwined with the contemporary people's entertainment. It'll be hard to send a message unless if everyone boycotts music and movies from riaa and mpaa and supports indies then probably riaa and mpaa will pick-up the message it's because of their media not piracy why they have lost revenue.

I as an American am appalled at most aspects of this treaty. It trounces on every right in this country that we as americans have come to know and respect and in turn gives Orwellian powers to the police and corporations for whom this law was written. Like Police in this country have nothing better to do then to search all the little Johnny Rottens' of the world hard drives looking for porn and Xvid copies of that crappy movie hurt locker. To be honest I really don't understand why more people are not up in arms over this. I have a feeling most people in this country have no idea what it's about.

I understand efforts to fight piracy, but this is clearly over the line. It flies in the face of the Constitution of this country. I expect this kind of crap for Republicans, but not Democrats. I'm appalled.

India and China are trying to protect their major pharmaceutical companies as they are major employers and major providers of modern medicine.

Problem is, these companies steal patented medicines from US or European companies and basically reverse engineer them thus saving R&D costs which usually total millions of dollars. This paired with the ability to process meds with less oversight on healthy production techniques leads to lower than low med prices.

This is an intricate issue which I am sure is beyond most forums goers, but hopefully experts can figure it out.

Still waiting for the day where the UN or a new international governing group has some actual influence, control, and/or credibility.

The creators create intellectual property like art, movies, music, invention, etc and the takers take that property without any notification. What will the world of the future be like with this type of economic turmoil?

When was the last time American people took to the streets and protested about anything with a passion. The last time America took to the streets was during the Vietnam War, and guess what, it didn't take long for the politicians to put an end to the war. HINT HINT AMERICA. Protesting still works, ask the French.

Please people go to the blog section and click on one. Do you see the orange word "BLOG" next to the orange section heading? That's how you tell a official blog article. Now look at this article do you see the word "Blog:" in orange next to the section title?

The word (blog) next to the name is just a link to that writer's blogs, click on it and you will see. You would think people could figure this out by now. Now it's true many of their "headlines" read more like opinion blogs but that's another story.

People get confused by that all the time, and I think it's intentional--at least, DailyTech has long known their format causes confusion and has done nothing to clarify it. When people see the word "blog" under the title of the article, people tend to think it refers to the article--not that the writer contributes to the blog section.

This news is entirely technology related. Basically ACTA means that any piece of technology you carry across a border can be taken and searched for copyrighted materials without warrant or even probable cause.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm now expected to travel along with receipts for my media collection - some of which is over 10 years old. I rip music and video from disk to mp3 or avi files and put them on my laptop and smart phone. Currently, that's entirely legal for me to do as long as it's personal use. If my country adopts ACTA the law will be re-written to make me a criminal. It's completely unreasonable and I'm ashamed my government is going along with it.

This is exactly why we need ACTA! The Indian government is only capable of handling one thing at a time. They can either fight spammers and botnets or enforce copyright. Not both at the same time, nope... :)

If you idiots read the sources, India is more concerned with the proposed pharma guidelines more so than the electronic/internet ones.

From Ars and the India Times:

"India doesn't worry so much about ACTA's much-discussed Internet section, but about issues like pharmaceutical production. According to the paper, infringement could occur 'if a medicine or product is made for which a company holds a patent in any country, no matter how unclear in scope and validity of the patent is.'"

Now let's talk about the immaturity levels of DailyTech readers. Leave meaningful comments for articles such as this or don't leave any at all..Douchebags.

And you wonder why the US pays so much for Health Care versus other countries. They just manufacture their own drugs that were developed here and NOT pay royalties to the patent holders. I wonder how much of the United States trade imbalance would shift if our companies were actually paid for all of the IP in software and pharmaceuticals that the developing nations steal?

I agree. Unfortunately in order to receive a patent, you need to publicly disclose the secrets behind your invention. And in this day and age, that information is easily available to anyone, anywhere on earth. Not just the public in the U.S.

Sorry, but that's ridiculous. US health care costs are NOT related to other countries making generic versions of certain drugs. That is a red herring that I would expect the drug companies to use to convince us of your point, but it's ludicrous. They just know they can charge whatever they want and insurance companies and the government (medicare/medicaid)will pay, no matter how insane the cost. Just look at the medicare laws passed under the last administration, the government cannot negotiate drug prices.

Our health care costs could actually be lower if not for laws saying that we can't import generic drugs (even legal ones where patents have expired) from countries like Canada.

If the government pays less, then individuals will have to pay more. If the government pays more, then individuals will not have to pay as much. Pretty much all price negotiations that go on in the medical industry are just shifting costs away from one group of people onto another - not to reduce overall costs.

But, I would guess you actually do believe our legislative branch all got together and asked each other "How can we get away with shifting more taxpayer money over to greedy businesses?"

The ambiguity of some of these provisions is mind-boggling. I'm sure they were written with the intent of keeping countries like India from manufacturing cheap generic versions of US drugs and shipping them to other countries, but the potential for abuse is huge.

quote: infringement could occur 'if a medicine or product is made for which a company holds a patent in any country, no matter how unclear in scope and validity of the patent is.

What's to stop my newly created pharma company from apply for and getting a patent in Upper Kabibistan for "Medicine that helps people" and seizing shipments at sea?

I was using sarcasm to make a point about the parent poster's position that India needs to clear up their spam problems before doing anything else in the realm of copyright and intellectual property.More importantly, it's a good thing we have people like you to insult anyone who doesn't meet your arbitrary standards of posting quality! You really illustrate the best thing about the internet: no need to be polite to anyone!